Stephanie Doyle - Who Wants To Marry a Heartthrob?

Dear Reader,

Come on. Admit it. At one point in time you have caught a snippet of The Bachelor, or The Bachelorette, or Average Joe or Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? Or maybe you’re a dedicated viewer. Well, this story is for everyone who has watched those shows and been amazed that reality can be so…dramatic!

I had just finished being flabbergasted that Trista actually dumped Charlie for Ryan when this story came to me in a flash. I couldn’t help but wonder what really happened when the cameras stopped rolling. What if the Bachelor wasn’t what he seemed? What would they do with a contestant with an A-cup bra size?

I saw Bridget as the anti-contestant. And since I have always loved the boss/secretary relationship—I’m a longtime fan of Josh and Donna on the West Wing—adding Richard as the demanding boss seemed like a perfect recipe for love, some fun and a lot of chaos.

I hope you enjoy this journey into my very warped, highly dramatic and hopefully very entertaining version of reality TV.

I do love to hear from readers. Come visit me at www.stephaniedoyle.net.

Happy reading,

Stephanie Doyle

“There’s only one thing to do. Trick him.”

This caught Bridget’s attention. “What do you mean?”

“Pretend you need him to kiss you for some other reason,” Raquel said. “Like you’ve got a piece of gum stuck on your back tooth and you need him to get it…. Only with his tongue.”

The concept had merit—the kissing part, not the gum part. But… “I don’t know,” Bridget hedged. “You don’t think it’s a little obvious? I would like to think that Richard and I were more mature than that.”

Of course, Richard was oblivious to her feelings, which were apparently pretty obvious to the world. She wouldn’t share them with him verbally because she was a scaredy-cat. The two of them basically were afraid of their respective families. Richard drew comic strips for entertainment.

So maybe they were not the two most mature people in the city.

“Trick him,” Raquel repeated firmly.

Trick him, Bridget repeated silently. It might just work. Wow, she truly was becoming an evil seductress. All she had to do was sleep with her sister’s husband or abscond with someone else’s baby, claiming it was hers and it would pretty much be a done deal.

Richard wasn’t going to know what hit him….

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Stephanie Doyle began her writing career in eighth grade when she was given an assignment to write in a journal every day. Her own life being routine, she used the opportunity to write her own sequel to the Star Wars movies. One hundred and six handwritten pages later, she discovered her lifelong dream—to be a writer. Currently, Stephanie resides in South Jersey with her cat, Alexandria Hamilton Doyle. Single, she still waits for Mr. Right to sweep her off her feet. She vows that whoever he is, he’ll decorate the cover of at least one of her books.

HARLEQUIN FLIPSIDE

2—ONE TRUE LOVE?

HARLEQUIN DUETS

65—DOWN-HOME DIVA

88—BAILY’S IRISH DREAM

SILHOUETTE INTIMATE MOMENTS

792—UNDISCOVERED HERO

For my brother, Chris. The funniest person I know.

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

EPILOGUE

“HOUSTON, we have a problem.”

“Huh?”

“We have a problem,” Bridget Connor repeated, although she didn’t know why she bothered. Her employer clearly was not listening. Right now his gaze was pinned on fourteen gorgeous women, each dressed more scantily than the next. Bridget had never seen so much Spandex in one sitting in her life. And she wondered about the engineering of some of the clothes that managed to hold certain body parts in place when it seemed as if the slightest shift might give away the farm, so to speak.

Not that her employer was waiting for a quick flash. Or maybe he was—he was a man after all. But he wasn’t ogling the women with the same intent that some of the other men in the room had. No, Richard Wells’s priority wasn’t sex right now.

It was money.

He turned his head and she could see him squint in her direction. Squinting was Richard’s universal sign for “Huh?” After three years of working for him, she was an expert on all of his subtle little expressions.

“Did you say something?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“Something about a problem,” he recalled. “In Houston?”

“No, here in New York.”

He looked confused. “Then why did you say Houston?”

“It’s an expression. Work with me, Richard.” Then she reminded herself that she needed to be patient with him tonight. Not that it didn’t require a great deal of patience to work with the moody ad executive on a normal day, but tonight was different. His focus was solely on the event that was to take place within the next half hour. Nothing short of a nuclear explosion would distract him from that.

“What is it?” he snapped impatiently.

She considered him while he continued to study the room. “You have no intention of listening to a word I say, do you?”

When he turned back to her, he was squinting again.

“I don’t have time for problems,” he announced.

“I can see that, but you do. Have a problem, that is.”

He shook his head as if to deny her words. “What could possibly go wrong? The camera crew is here, the women are here—well, most of them anyway—and my heartthrob is most definitely here.” Richard pointed to the man standing by himself, away from the women. Brock Brickman was broad, blond, buffed and the perfect choice for Breathe Better Mouthwash’s newly sponsored show—Who Wants To Marry a Heartthrob?

“It’s about one of the girls,” Bridget tried.

Distracted, Richard looked over his shoulder and spotted two men in suits walking through the entryway into the large living room, which had been temporarily transformed into a television set. Don and Dan Meadle were the co-CEOs and owners of Breathe Better Mouthwash. They also happened to be twins, which never failed to amuse Richard and cause him to silently mock the parents who had named them. Obviously, they were here to check up on the project, but he refused to be nervous. Everything was on schedule for his advertising masterpiece.

Who Wants To Marry a Heartthrob? a reality dating show set in New York, was going to put the burgeoning mouthwash company on the map. Two live group shows, four taped individual dates and two romantic weekend getaways, also taped and edited for maximum dramatic effect, would feature exclusively the mouthwash commercials that he had created.

The entire package had been Richard’s concept. Once he had found a cable channel that would support the dating show over the course of eight weeks, his vision had become a reality. Now it was time for the show to air and his nerves were being put to the test, although there was absolutely no reason for it, he assured himself. He had left no stone unturned.

The first piece of the puzzle had been finding the location. He and Bridget had searched the summer play area of New York’s wealthy, South Hampton, for days. Then they had stumbled on a house that was both markedly luxurious and effortlessly romantic.

The sprawling Victorian sat on an inlet of Long Island Sound. Done in white both inside and out, except for the hints of color strategically added throughout, it lent itself to a summer dream. A covered pool took up space on the green lawn that extended toward the water. And in back of the house there was a massive patio, complete with a hot tub and porch swing. It was a heartthrob’s ultimate bait.

The season was right. It was late fall, a little chilly perhaps, but the summer season was over and most of the tourists were gone. This would allow them more flexibility to get the shots on the beach and in the restaurants that they wanted for the four hour-long dates that would be aired individually.

That’s right, Richard thought. Not one stone. He had handpicked each of the fifteen women as well as the heartthrob. Every detail of the show was in his control. Nothing escaped his notice. Not Brock’s cologne, not the host’s tie, not the wardrobe of the ladies. Nothing.

He was investing everything he had into this ad campaign. If it was successful—and it would be because the idea was genius—the Breathe Better Mouthwash executives would have no choice but to follow him when he branched out and opened his own agency. He’d worked for this night for years and success, real success, which to date had been an elusive lady, was within his grasp.

Unfortunately, it was usually moments like this when he thought he was so close to something that nothing could go wrong—that it all went wrong. He need only reflect on that last week before he was to have graduated from Yale to get a reminder of that particularly painful lesson.

“They’re here,” Richard announced ominously, his chin lifting slightly in the direction of the twins.

Bridget turned and glanced at the two men who were standing off to the side observing the spectacle that was a live television show.

“This is it,” Richard told her somewhat fatalistically, feeling his heart beat hard against his rib cage and his palms beginning to sweat. For the most part he wouldn’t have considered himself a nervous man, but right now it felt as if his whole life was coming down to this one crucial moment. He glanced at Bridget, grateful for her presence. Not only did he know that he had her support throughout this endeavor, but he also knew that she would cover his tracks if he needed to leave the room real quick to puke. “If this works—And it is going to work, right? We both agree it couldn’t fail. Right?”

“Right.”

“You’re only saying that because you know that’s what I want to hear, aren’t you,” he accused her.

“Right.”

He could live with that.

“This will be the big one. The one I’ve been looking for. The one that is going to free me and my creative genius from the death grip of the V.I.P. Advertising Agency.”

Bridget rolled her eyes.

“I saw you do that.”

“You’re so dramatic,” she said. “You’ve been looking for the ‘one’ for years now. And V.I.P. doesn’t have you in a death grip. They pay you really well. That’s why you stay with them.”

“It’s just that I have a loft in Soho. You know what I pay in rent. I can’t quit and start my own agency until I’m positive, absolutely sure, that one of these big companies is going to follow me. But this is it. I can smell it.”

“You don’t think that’s the mouthwash?”

Richard took his eyes off the two executives and focused them on his assistant again. Her lips were turned up in that soft smile that she was famous for. Subtlety, he thought, thy name is Bridget.

It was there in the way she pulled her midnight hair back into a tight bun, the way she always wore stark black clothes and the way she always maintained a sense of calm even in the face of chaos—as she was doing now. He couldn’t help but envy her that serenity.

“You know this night is about your future, too,” he told her. “Didn’t I promise you I would make you vice president?”

“Ooh. Vice president of a two-person company. A staggering promotion,” she quipped. But the truth was she knew that following Richard to his own company was the career break she’d been looking for since she’d graduated college and ended up in the assistant pool at V.I.P. It did occur to her that he’d never really asked her if she was willing to quit V.I.P. and join him in his endeavors. He’d just assumed she would.